Conventional hand-held wire stripping tools are designed to remove a relatively short length of insulation from the end of an insulated conductor so that a high conductivity electrical connection can be made to the end of bare wire. A number of tool configurations have appeared. One popular type, long in use, employs a series of sharpened semi-circular notches cut in the opposing arms of a pair of hand-held scissors. Different size wire can be accommodated by being placed in the appropriate pair of semi-circular notches. The scissor arms are then closed together to cause the sharpened pair of notches to ring the insulation and cause it to be pierced through to the conductor core. Once so ringed the arms are relaxed slightly so that the tool can be moved along to widen the ring-shaped gap toward the free end of the wire thereby causing the cylinder of cut insulation to be removed.
While the notched scissor-arm design has seen long service and many refinements, its basic characteristic dictates that the degree of friction between the tool and the wire after the insulation has been ringed will be high. This occasions no particular difficulty when only a short length of insulation is to be removed from the end of the wire. However, when yards and yards of insulation are to be stripped, as may be the case when reel ends are to be prepared for scrapping, the conventional wire stripper generates so much friction that it cannot be efficiently utilized.